Capturing Beautiful People, the Donny Miller Way

“Remember, you can have anything.

You just have to think it.

Just kidding, life isn’t that simple.”-Donny Miller

Donny Miller’s artwork intuitively collapses the boundaries between tradition, pop, and art, but this humorous artist brings more than quirky wisdom into his work. Best known for his book Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings (2006), Miller has sculpted a nose resembling pop superstar Michael Jackson parallel to Miller’s own success. He has aspirations to create a full sperm sized whale inside a desolate parking lot. Miller is trained in jiu jitsu and some boxing/muay Thai. He likes getting punched in the face because it makes him feel alive and he also likes to punch others in the face.

When he is not involved in his eccentric activities, however, Miller is a provocative artist, bringing to light a blend of performance, street, video, conceptual and pop, without fitting neatly into any paradigm.

Speaking of his work, Miller acknowledges that he does see himself as a writer too, In an interview with Juxtapoz magazine in 2012, where in response to being asked whether he sees himself as a writer, Miller answers, “Definitely. In fact that’s what I went to school for first. I went to school for art in the beginning, then changed to an English major, writing. Then I started to do film stuff and then just quit. If was just a local college. I got a job and went from there. Sometimes I wish I could have stayed in college, just so I’d have all this debt I could brag about. I’ve seen people out-debt each other.”

Personally, Miller’s work appeals to me because his hints of satire is always implacable- you cannot suggest that his work sends either overtly positive messages, or negative ones. Here’s a sampling of several of his pieces.

They are stunning..Especially the originality in the thought behind them 🙂 It seems like something we all want to say but cannot say because we lack in words…Donny understood and expressed a similar thought!